


Heart Shaken Down

by oxymoronic



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, One Shot, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:45:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronic/pseuds/oxymoronic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tony inadvertently orchestrates a threesome and Phil Coulson plays matchmaker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart Shaken Down

**Author's Note:**

> This was written a long, long time ago as a present for Starling-Girl because... of reasons.
> 
> I haven't written smut for a while. I honestly apologise. I take this fic as a testament to the fact you can write 3,000 words of sex and only use the word "cock" once. Holds absolutely no connection narrative-wise with _The Avengers_ and thus has no spoilers.
> 
> Title from Eagles of Death Metal's _[How Can a Man with So Many Friends Feel So Alone?](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tKCmSsne7o)_ , which is just Tony feels all over the place.
> 
> As far as I'm aware there's nothing to warn for inside, but please, if you do find some content distressing, feel free to drop me a line and I will warn accordingly.

They’re riding high in the field again, the steady, loud booms of familiar explosions rattling his teeth in his head, and Tony wants to bite the sky, wants to taste iron between his teeth. He turns his eye back to the monster of the week, and he’s unable to take it seriously; it looks too much like a monster from a J.J. Abrams movie, too many limbs and a hot, stretching maw for a mouth. He’s no idea whether it’s man-made or has been beamed here from the other side of the galaxy; all he wants to know is whether it can handle the bite of his repulsor through its flesh and bone.

They’re a little edgier, here, because the thing has been let loose fifty meters from one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s HQs – which means their potential losses are a little more significant than some civilian building and its occupants Stark Industries can afford to patch up and shut up. The bunker is being evacuated, though at a somewhat leisurely pace; it amuses him to notice that most of the suit-clad, tough-looking employees look more put-out than scared. This is probably a daily occurrence for them, and he knows from the bitching he’s heard that this isn’t one of those governmental departments that’s beyond the reach of paperwork and early-morning meetings and excessive use of the word synergy.

_“He’s not even listening,”_ Natasha’s saying, and the view through Tony’s visor informs him that her mouth is twisted in a small, displeased smile.

“I so am,” he replies, deducing correctly that he’s being called out on his inattention. “Lemme guess, I go up high, open up the blasters on it, and bring you back its head – how does that sound?”

_“We want this one alive, Stark,”_ Coulson says; probably an escaped lab rat, then. Figures. _“And preferably with all its limbs.”_

Tony watches dispassionately as the thing flails one such limb and sends a humvee crashing into a far-off building; and Tony’s got no idea what’s in there except for the fact it’s explosive as fuck and suddenly there are huge, thick chunks of debris falling on every side. He vaguely hears someone curse loudly across the comms, and then a low, long, rattling _boom_ heralds a static whiteout from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s end. When Tony pulls himself back onto his feet with great grace and dignity the bunker that had previously been their communications hot-room is now a huge, smoking crater of twisted, molten metal, belching copious clouds of thick, black smoke into the monster’s path. It sits and watches them, and Tony’s suddenly aware of a fierce intelligence burning behind its eyes.

He kicks up into the air, switching on the same filters he uses for night-vision to compensate for the smoke that’s rising all around him; his companions are clustered behind a truck and Steve Rogers on the other side of the complex. Tony skids across to join them, dropping down beside Cap in mid-flow; somehow he doubts the creature’s survival is paramount now a handful of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s agents’ lives are on the line. He barely even registers Clint arriving, tight-lipped and white-skinned against the flushed, golden sky, doesn’t even think it’s remarkable until he notices the long, steady look Cap’s giving him.

“Go scout out the damage, Hawkeye,” Steve says, and Clint’s off in a flash, halfway across the swollen, beaten ground before Tony can blink. The wreckage to his left does suggest a serious dent in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s behind – and he realizes with a small jolt of surprise that the bunker had presumably been full of men and women that Clint knew. Tony wants to help, he realizes, eyeing the debris. Huh. He guesses he can add “ridiculous altruism” to the list of character traits the Avengers initiative has blown from a spark into a fully-fledged flame.

“Take to the skies, Iron Man,” Steve’s saying, as if he can add freaky super-psychic to the list of symptoms of super-serum. _Take to the skies_ , Steve said, and Tony does.

 

 

So that was the mission, and this is Tony now, hyped and thrumming, desperate for the taste of iron between his teeth, feeling like there’s grit lodged under his fingernails, like there’s something locked in him he just can’t shake free. “Get some rest,” Steve had said, fully aware that Tony had been on a coding tear when the call had come in, that he hadn’t slept for near-on fifty hours now; but Steve isn’t here, Steve is back at the battlefield doing whatever Steve does to make himself feel better after they’ve just watched a bunch of innocents getting their throats ripped out. Tony normally goes with alcohol and a willing partner of any sex, but whilst the former he has in plentiful supply the latter’s a little more hard to obtain now his house has been turned into the Avengers’ HQ.

It’s with this in mind that he turns the corner and finds Clint Barton in his lounge-cum-kitchen, looking tired and worn and with his sweatpants low-slung across his waist, showing just a flash of his hips. Tony’d like to say that it wouldn’t matter who he’d found, but he’s pretty sure Jane and Betty’d have his balls on a plate, and the Black Widow is called that for a reason; all in all, Clint is a pretty good option. It helps, of course, that Tony finds him hot as fuck and knows that he’s the kind of guy who won’t be an asshole about it in the morning.

His blood’s still coming thick in his ears, rushing and booming in a low, quiet whine, when he approaches Clint with fingertips spread and hustles him up against the kitchen counter. “Tony,” Clint says, and not in the way he’d like; all sarcasm gone, all banter dropped. Admonishing. Tony kisses him anyway, but there’s no buck of his hips, no answering moan, and Tony pulls away, one eyebrow raised. Clint smiles, and it’s almost apologetic. “Monogamy,” he explains, and Tony tries to pretend it doesn’t floor him, just keeps the single eyebrow raised, fixes a smirk onto his lips.

“Didn’t figure you for the type,” Tony says, and Clint shrugs, as if to say _me neither_. Tony’s smile grows with a fixed nonchalance, and he thumps Clint’s arm, not even hard enough to bruise. He walks away, calls back over his shoulder that he’ll “be in the shop”, and takes each step quickly, deliberately, as if there isn’t sharp bile roiling thick and hot in his stomach.

 

 

And because one outright rejection clearly isn’t enough for the universe, a handful of days later he finds himself walking in on Clint Barton receiving a very enthusiastic blowjob.

Okay, first off, this totally isn’t Tony’s fault. As much as he’s a total pervert sometimes, there are some things that even he doesn’t want to see; and the second he knew he was going to be sharing a home with a bunch of loud-mouthed and boisterous superheroes (read: Thor Odinson) he’d gone to special measures to make sure they’d all been equipped with their _own_ rooms and their _own_ showers as far away from _his_ rooms and _his_ workshop as he could manage, and just to be absolutely sure he’d had the whole damn complex soundproofed. It’s beside the point that JARVIS has constant high-quality video streams running in every single one of these rooms, because that’s damn necessary for security purposes, okay. And so far Tony’s only ever peeked once, and he’s never, ever done so again.

So it is completely, totally, definitely not Tony’s fault that Clint-and-whoever-it-is decide to have apparently mindblowing sex in Tony’s living room on Tony’s sofa at 2 a.m.

He only knows it’s Clint because the guy blurts out a long, needy “ _fuck_ ” the moment he walks in the room, and in many ways Tony’s kind of glad he did; it’s what alerts him to the whole situation in the first place. He pauses in the doorway, but it seems the two of them haven’t heard him enter, and he turns on his heel at the second expletive and decides to slum it on the bed in his shop for the night.

He comes hard and fast when he thinks of it, curled up alone in aforementioned bed a handful of hours later, but it doesn’t scratch the something curled up in his hollow chest. He sleeps restlessly, unhappily after.

 

 

Coulson’s there for a morning (read: early afternoon) debriefing when he drags his ass out of bed and into the kitchen, weariness finally losing to the growling protests of his gut. If Tony were less of an asshole he’d think twice before embarrassing a fellow Avenger before their superior officer, but in case you missed it Tony can be a total dick sometimes.

“Hope you didn’t stain the leather, sweetcheeks,” Tony says as he passes through to the kitchen, hand darting out lightning-fast and slapping Clint straight on the ass, and he’s rewarded by nothing more than one of Coulson’s bland, polite smiles.

 

 

Clint in his workshop is actually a pretty rare occurrence, mainly because the guy has a whole troupe of bitches at S.H.I.E.L.D. whose entire paycheck stems from the time spent working out how to make Clint’s obsession with archery somehow transfer into the field, and that’s not even mentioning the hideous jumpsuits they keep pulling out of their asses one lurid colour at a time. He still has an entrance code, though; the whole team does, because as much as he hates people messing with his stuff Pepper keeps insisting he becomes a _people person_. He eventually reconciled his loss of privacy with the fact that it’d be pretty hard to have dirty impromptu sex with his hot teammates if they can’t get into the lab in the first place – though this is something he’s definitely never told Pepper.

Anyway, basically, he’s surprised to see their resident Hawk skulking in front of the disassembled heap of the Audi’s carburettor, but it’s not the weirdest thing that’s happened all day. He doubts he’s being summoned for some mission or another; JARVIS normally fields (and ignores) those calls, or Coulson comes down and proverbially kicks his ass around the ‘shop until he puts down whatever he’s got that’s shiny. And besides, the guy’s well out of his combat gear, dressed in a snug-fitting jumper-and-jeans combo, and, okay, it is totally not fair for someone to make comfortable look sexy.

“Which makes this a personal call,” he deduces, and Clint doesn’t seem thrown by the non-sequitur; he shrugs, smiles, drops whatever small part of the car’s gut that had caught his interest. It occurs to Tony that he probably could have killed Tony with whatever it is in a heartbeat, and if you ever want written proof of the fact that Tony is all kinds of crazy, that tiny little thought actually turns him the fuck on. “You’re not here to commission some kind of crazy sex-toy, are you? Because I can _definitely_ promise that I don’t – ”

“It’s about the other night, actually,” Clint interrupts, barely an eyelash batted; Tony’s definitely going to have to crank up the “random shockingly dirty statements” level with this one.

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Monogamy?” he says, echoing the quotation with the movement of his fingers.

“Still no change there,” Clint says placidly, and Tony finds himself wondering not for the first time who the fuck’s got their claws in Clint Barton. Tony’s flipping a screwdriver idly between his fingers, because he’s one hell of a fidget – but Clint’s calm, still, perfectly composed, eyes trained on him in a way that’s so fiercely concentrated it kind of gives him goosebumps. “But I took your proposition home last night – and, well, we’re interested,” he adds, and holy mother of fuck Clint could be dating Pepper’s mother for all he cares because _fuck. yes._ ‘We’ isn’t what he’d expected; ‘we’ is a little different. But Tony can totally work with ‘we’.

“Guy or girl or otherwise?” he asks.

Clint looks momentarily surprised, one eyebrow raised. “Guy,” he replies. “But I didn’t figure that’d bother you much. Considering your reputation.”

Tony wets his lips. “Well, I think you can get a pretty solid _yes_ on my part,” he says, and the smile Clint gives him is all kinds of sinful.

Tony puts down the screwdriver and virtually slinks across the room, a weird thrum of déjà-vu as he echoes the earlier movement of his fingertips, presses up against Clint’s chest and kisses him hot and dirty; and Clint gives as good as he gets, this time, and woah, okay, Tony definitely wasn’t using those knees for anything important. Tony pulls back, his pulse a low, hot thrum, licks his lips again, wonders what he can get away with before Clint tells him to stop.

“I can only promise you once, Tony,” Clint says, quietly.

Tony looks him straight in the eye, and says, “I’m a one-time only kinda guy.”

 

 

“Lose the clothes,” Clint says the moment they cross the threshold, and that’s one order Tony’s always happy to obey. Phil’s a half-step behind him – and yes, he’s still having issues believing that it’s _that_ Phil fucking Coulson, who never seems to wear anything other than suit and tie, who he previously suspected Fury hung up in a closet somewhere like an automaton and dusted him down every time he needed him. The guy looks downright _naked_ to Tony, dressed in a button-down shirt and a pair of slacks. He looks thoroughly indecent.

Clint makes a beeline for the bathroom, and Tony’s always loved a practical man. Phil flicks open the button on Tony’s jeans as he tugs him in close, one finger locked in his belt loops, and kisses him; _Jesus_ , Tony didn’t know Phil had it in him, but he’s glad as fuck he’s in this position now. He full-on zones out, caught up in the rasp of Phil’s mouth. “Let him breathe,” Clint says, smirking just a little, and it hits Tony like a hammer through the haze; he’d not even noticed Clint return.

Tony points a finger straight up in Phil’s face. “You are good at that.” He glances over at Clint. “I can see why you keep him around.”

“And you’re still dressed,” Clint replies blandly, but there’s a trademark shit-eating grin plastered all over his face. He steps behind Tony and furls his fingers into the hem at the bottom of his shirt, starts to tug it over his head; Phil continues his good work with Tony’s jeans. Clint sends Phil a quick, sharp smile, drags his fingers absently up Tony’s chest, runs his finger absently around the cool metal rim of the reactor in a way that makes him shiver. “Surprised you didn’t cut it off him.”

Phil smirks. “If it didn’t cost more than my quarterly paycheck I’d be tempted.” He tugs Tony’s jeans to knee-level, and Tony kicks free of his shoes, steps out of his jeans and tugs Phil in again as his reward as Clint darts around him to work on Phil’s clothes instead. He stands with his eyes closed and gets lost for a while, is ever so thankful when Phil’s S.H.I.E.L.D.-influenced dress sense means they don’t have to part for Clint to peel open his shirt and bare his chest, ping off each button carefully, one by one. There’s a deep heat in Clint’s eyes when he slides the shirt off, arm by arm, and he feels Phil shiver when he breaks away and rests his forehead against Tony’s neck, his breathing fast and erratic.

“Put him on the bed,” Clint says quietly, working Phil’s slacks down his thighs, and his voice is wonderfully, beautifully raw. For once, Tony does as he’s told, guiding a dazed-looking Phil over to the farcically enormous mattress swathed in soft sheets with gentle prods of his fingertips, and they pause only briefly on the cusp to tug off Phil’s shoes and let him kick free from the final curls of his clothing; then he’s warm and writhing under Tony and everything else slides away.

The mattress dips slightly to his right; Clint, settling down beside them, and Tony extracts himself from the realms of Phil’s collarbone to glance over at him. He finds himself swallowing the quip resting on his tongue at the sight of Clint’s wide, blown eyes, slack lips letting out the tiniest of breaths, clearly out of his control; Clint’s hand slides round the back of Tony’s neck and he kisses him, hot and slow. He feels Phil stir underneath him, and then warm, bright fingers are scraping down his chest, past the reactor, along the sharp lines of his hipbones, down along his thighs and back up again, rhythmic, excruciatingly slow, nails digging sporadically into his flesh. Wordlessly, Clint breaks away from him and turns to Phil instead, leans down and kisses him in a quick, possessive movement that thrums like static up and down Tony’s spine.

Tony takes advantage of his new position and runs his fingers slowly, carefully along Clint’s back, pressing soft and hard and soft again, tracing whichever line of muscle or sinew that catches his eye. He’s disrupted in his exploration by Phil, who pushes himself up on his elbows as Clint shuffles round to kneel behind Tony. Clint runs his nails down Tony’s chest from behind, as slow and torturing as Phil had done before. Tony lets his fingers echo Clint’s movements on Phil’s chest, and for a moment they play a strange call-and-answer game, with Clint drawing strange, nonsensical patterns on Tony’s chest and Tony replicating them in almost-sync on Phil’s.

Clint digs his nails hard into Tony’s shoulders; Tony can feel him shaking, the trembling ever so slight. When Tony breaks the spell, makes a movement of his own, runs his fingers along, down, past Phil’s sharp hipbones; down his thighs in skittish, spiralling movements; then round to rest, briefly, at the crux of his ass, he feels Phil’s whole body ripple in a shiver and then still, Phil’s back snap ramrod straight. Suddenly, all the air feels sucked from the room; all three of them frozen in that moment as their minds each work through the logistics of what they could – will – do.

“Whatever you want,” Phil says to Clint, his voice impossibly soft. He has his eyes locked on Clint’s, over Tony’s shoulder, and something in them is so incredibly tender Tony has to look away, dig his nails into his palms against the hot, unfamiliar pain that crests up inside his chest. Clint’s fingers dig convulsively into Tony’s biceps; he hears the dry click of his throat behind him as he swallows. He can almost hear the argument raging in Clint’s mind, one between the overbearing need to keep Phil safe and the amount he wants to watch Tony take him apart, piece by piece.

His fingers clench once more on Tony’s arms – admonishing, a warning – and then a hand slides down Tony’s side to rest against his own, guide his movements further along Phil’s ass and squeeze. “Do it,” he murmurs in Tony’s ear, all breathy and wet and Jesus no one should have a voice like that; and Tony’s about to ask for his supplies when Phil suddenly shoots up underneath him to kiss Clint over his shoulder, all awkward angles and bumping necks and frantic, needy whines. Then Phil pulls back, shuffles back along the mattress, pulling Tony along with him with one hand on his shoulder and a truly wicked smile; and Clint makes a lunge for the side-table, for the lube Tony knows he’s stashed there. “Slowly,” Clint warns as he hands it to him, and his eyes, though a little ragged and blown, are serious and sharp as well. “He hasn’t done this in a while.”

He senses, rather than sees, Phil’s roll of the eyes, his exasperated smile; Clint’s ducked down between them to kiss him as hard as he can, his fingers sliding skittishly along his stomach, down his hips, briefly fluttering across his cock, and then resting on his knee as he slowly, carefully guides Phil’s legs apart. Tony rests his hand on Clint’s shoulder and the latter moves away, hovering on the outskirts as Tony takes Clint’s place between Phil’s legs, dipping his neck down to kiss him hot and slow as he presses that first finger up inside him.

Despite Phil’s nonchalance, Clint was right to warn him; the going is more than a little slow, and although Phil’s been trained to stand more pain than most men will ever know Tony doesn’t miss the little hitch of breath he lets loose, the little shiver that wriggles down his spine. “Relax,” Tony breathes, reaching down to nip a little at his neck. “I’m going slow on this one, Coulson,” he says, and then displays the true Stark nature by curling the tip of his finger against his newfound prostate in a single, arcing blow. Phil shakes out a low, wracking groan, his hips jerking up from the mattress with the touch as his head pushes back against the pillows; and coming from Phil Coulson, even this slight admission of noise curls hot and hard around Tony’s stomach, and he finds himself taking up a chunk of the mattress with the other hand, pressing his eyes shut, grabbing at some semblance of his own control.

He opens them once more as Clint’s fingers meander down his spine, and he finds himself faced with a breathless, half-wrung smile, a slight shake of the head. “Sometimes I wonder if you ever follow orders,” Clint murmurs with a roll of the eyes, and Tony lets out a shaky laugh of his own. He shifts a little on the bed to take the pressure off his aching wrist, and then focuses back down at the task in hand; Phil’s still watching him, mouth curved in a small smirk, his breathing at least resembling something normal compared to the others in the room. Tony, resolving to do something about that, reattaches himself to Phil’s collarbone as he works a second finger inside, twists and curls it as much as he can, slowly, surely, quietly works him open.

He’s stopped yet again only by the press of Clint’s fingers at his side, and he pulls himself away from the focused zone he’d dropped down into to survey his work as a whole. He finds Phil’s eyelids fluttering as erratically as his breathing, has to hold himself back from diving to chase the rivulets of sweat that ooze their lazy way across his chest, reflecting the soft, ersatz light of the reactor in the otherwise darkened room. Clint, ever still and stoic, still sits beside them, and Tony turns his head to kiss him once more, finds his response is hot and hungry despite his apparent semblance of control.

It’s Clint that pulls back, his mouth stretched on one side by a truly wicked smirk; and Tony knows that look, has seen that look all over, knows when Barton’s got into his mind what he considers to be an utterly awesome idea. Clint flicks his eyes from Tony down to Phil, silently orders him to keep on going, and with a roll of his eyes Tony leans down to kiss Phil once more, concentrates on guiding his fingers in slow-quick, hard-soft movements, aiming at an unpredictability that makes Phil choke on the moans climbing from his throat. Tony watches Phil’s hips spasm in short, unconscious movements, chasing the press and pull of his fingers, so impossibly hot that it wrenches through Tony’s stomach.

It’s only when Clint’s sliding that one, crooked finger in beside Tony’s that he has any idea of Clint’s plans at all, and then whole sections of his mind are crashing and shutting down around him. Phil goes utterly still beneath him, and Tony opens eyes he didn’t even know he’d closed to look down at him, his hips arced uncomfortably high off the bed, his eyes dazed and wide and staring sightlessly up above, shocked, heavy pants flitting in and out of his mouth, licked at the edge with tiny, helpless moans. Beside him, Clint’s mouth is still stretched in that familiar, shit-eating grin, and he reaches wordlessly for a pillow to slide under Phil’s hips, trails his free hand down the tense, locked curve of Tony’s spine.

“Moving a little slow for me, Stark,” he says around his grin, and unfurls his fingers in a slow, strategic movement, his eyes trained carefully on Phil’s face, all semblance of joviality gone as he shrinks his world down to Phil’s thoughts, Phil’s needs. Tony has to take a moment, then, has to bow his head and unfocus his eyes and concentrate on the steady pull and push of his breathing, fight for some veneer of control. Then Clint’s pulling out, resting his sticky fingers on Tony’s thigh in a way that really, really should be gross, and Tony looks up once more to see rather than hear him say “he’s ready”.

Tony reaches for Clint in a blind, wordless, fleeting kiss, and as they break away from it he presses a condom into Tony’s palm. Tony kicks back onto his hackles to slide it on as Clint manhandles Phil up and around and onto his knees and elbows, throws the extra pillow away, his mouth locked by Phil’s ear all the while, whispering promises and entreaties and constant reassurance, his babbling, nonsensical sentences all running together as one. Then, as Tony approaches, he falls back yet again to sit in silence at Phil’s side; but Tony notices their fingers are still firmly intertwined, Clint’s hand locked in a deathgrip around Phil’s so hard the knuckles are showing white.

Tony runs his fingers one more time along Phil’s shoulders, tight and wracked with tension, a silent reassurance; then he aligns their hips and slowly, sweetly presses himself inside.

The whole world shrinks painfully small around him, pushes up against his skin with painful intensity as he’s suckerpunched squarely by sensation. He knows by the ache around his eyes that he’s jammed them shut, by the low, tense throb in his chest that he’s struggling to breathe, but he finds himself incapable of fighting it; for a long, slow, almost painful minute he’s completely overwhelmed. Then, like a crack of lightning the tension in him releases in a shuddering, wracking jolt that seems to shake his bones, and he’s clutching tightly at the mattress and letting out an uncharacteristically long, loud moan, wrenched from him so sharply it makes his throat feel sore.

“Christ, Tony,” he hears Clint say, muffled and very far away, and then he’s being kissed once more, and he turns into it blindly, attacks it with all his ferocity; he feels Phil shift a little beneath him, his hips pushing and flexing up against him, and it pulls from Tony’s mouth yet another quiet whine. He reaches out for Phil’s back and traces the rippling muscles of his shifting shoulders; Phil’s rocking his hips back against him in tiny, erratic motions, almost helpless, and Tony wonders if he even knows he’s doing it. He pulls his hips back and pushes forwards in a single, strong motion, and Phil chokes on a moan, buries his head further down into his pillow.

He repeats it once again, pulls a little further, pushes a little deeper, is rewarded by yet another gasping, wretched noise from the man that lies beneath him; then he drops his forehead down against the nape of Phil’s neck and loses himself in it, forgets to count, to measure, to breathe. He’s a shivering, shaking mess; he’s lost all semblance of slow and steady and is sloppy and frantic instead, but going by his audience’s reaction nobody else seems to mind.

Beside him, Clint still has one hand locked with Phil against his side, but is using the other on himself, his head tipped back, mouth slack and open and panting freely, his blown, wracked eyes locked on Tony’s face, almost sightless from sensation. Tony lets his gaze fall down to Phil’s rolling, sweat-soaked back once more, tries to regain some kind of rhythm, of concentration, but finds himself enraptured by the way Phil’s fingers rest against Clint’s, locked tighter and tighter as Tony moves faster, knuckles beautifully, wonderfully, impossibly, blindingly white –

– and then Phil judders to a nerve-jangling halt beneath him, every muscle in his body snapped taut and tight, lets it all out in an all-convulsive shudder before slumping silently still beneath him.

Tony lets his eyes drift closed, his own arousal spiralling up hot and hard inside his gut, twisted and firm and tight in a vicious corkscrew, pressing out against every inch of his skin, screeching to be released. “Come on, Tony,” Clint says, voice intolerably gentle. “Finish it.” Tony moves once more, twice more, and comes, nerves sparking and screaming under his skin.

He falls down onto his side on the vast, cool mattress, tries to remember how to breathe. Clint’s taut thigh presses stickily, damply against his still-sweaty skin, and he looks up in a stupor, finds Clint staring down at him with sightless eyes. Tony murmurs something nonsensical, turns to press his mouth up against Clint’s leg in a sloppy, unattractive kiss; he looks up again just in time to see Clint come, slack-jawed and shaking up above him.

He must have fallen into a daze; he finds himself torn from it by Clint’s gentle movements above him, trying to protect Tony from the cold by curling him up inside their ridiculously large duvet. He can feel the dip in the mattress at his side from where Phil lies, presumably similarly swaddled and cared for, and suddenly he finds his presence jars agonisingly with this quiet, domestic scene. Tony pushes himself up onto his elbows despite Clint’s firm hands trying to drive him down again, his distant, quiet voice muttering assurances that he can stay.

“I’m fine,” he says, pushing Clint away. “Need to finish something in the shop before bedtime anyway.”

He’s pretty sure he fools no one but himself as he gathers the scattered remnants of his clothes and leaves; but by the time he’s at the door and chances a glance back towards the bed his companions in the room are entirely caught up in each other once again, and this hurts him far more deeply and strongly than even he had known it could.

 

 

He showers, and changes, because as much as he can be a “morally reprehensible asshat with no sense of common decency” (Rhodey’s words, not his), he does at least have some qualms about personal hygiene, and ew, gross. Then he heads up to the living room, because he’s got fuck-all chance of sleeping tonight and he’s nowhere near focused enough to go tinker in the shop without risking levelling half of Manhattan. (Admittedly, this hasn’t often stopped him before.)

Apparently he lives in a house of damn insomniacs, because Steve’s still up too, watching reruns of the game on their ridiculously large, fantastically-HQ-if-I-do-say-so-myself TV screen. “Room for one more?” he asks as Steve glances up; the guy nods, gestures to the sofa beside him, but Tony goes for the chair across the room because he’s Tony.

“The game” is about as far as Tony could go to describe it; he’s got a bat’s chance in hell of telling you which sport they’re playing, never mind which team or who’s winning. He trains his eye on the screen and lets his mind zone out into nothing, fill up with white noise, soothing, calming, the direct antithesis to the zone he usually drops into to think.

He’s jolted back to Earth by Steve’s hot hand on his shoulder; he does his best not to jump. The TV’s quiet across the room; it probably has been for some time. “Tony,” Steve says, voice somehow soft and hard and calm and stern all at once. “Get some sleep.”

He looks up, tries to study the rise and fall of Steve’s face, but the guy’s about as unreadable as Agent Coulson’s poker face right now; Tony ducks his head, looks away. He focuses his tired eyes on the slowly-lightening skyline, sucks in a quick, deep breath through his teeth. _Get some sleep_ , Steve said, and Tony does.

 

 

Coulson’s still there in the morning – okay, afternoon, guilty as charged, but Tony can’t help but wondering how many times Agent Coulson’s made a suspiciously early-morning visit to the house-slash-Mansion to deliver a “briefing”. Maybe Tony really was the last goddamn guy on the planet to twig onto that one. He gives Tony a quick, mild look, and wow, is Tony hallucinating?, because he’s pretty sure there might have been a smile in there someplace. Clint’s balanced on the kitchen counter beside him, face split in a shit-eating grin and casually tossing one of Tony’s best knives with his right hand.

“This arrived for you this morning, Stark,” Coulson says as Tony climbs onto a stool by the breakfast bar, and holds a plain unmarked white envelope in his direction; Tony’s sure Coulson catches onto his scathing look long before he puts it down on the counter and slides it over with one pointed finger.

“I’m ready for my debriefing, _sir_ ,” Clint says in the most ludicrously dirty of ludicrously dirty tones, all hot and filthy and whispered right in his ear, and Tony’s pretty sure the otherwise neutral expression that occupies Coulson’s face is covering one of endeared irritation. Coulson sends Tony a long, meaningful look, glances pointedly at the envelope and then heads for the elevator, one Agent Barton in tow, walking only half a pace behind.

Tony pushes the stool from side to side with the heel of his foot and stares unseeing down at the white envelope. Across the room, Steve’s glued to the TV again; some crappy daytime TV, he thinks. He bets Clint got him hooked. He opens the envelope absently, and nearly ends up ripping the tickets that fall into his lap in two; for a moment, his brain is full of crazy-ass ideas about Coulson inviting him on some kind of secret date, but really it’s kind of obvious who ticket number two is for, the you-can-have-three-guesses-and-the-first-two-don’t-count level of obvious. Well, he’s clearly been far less subtle than he’d thought. Usually he’s so discreet.

“Is Phil giving you paperwork already?” Steve asks, and wow, okay, for such a big guy he’s pretty fucking ninja because he’s managed to turn the TV off and cross the room and get all up in Tony’s space before he even noticed him. (Also, _Phil_? Seriously?)

Tony looks down at the tickets in his hand; some god must be on his side somewhere because they’re face-down, two nondescript pieces of paper that fit snugly into his palm. He realizes his mouth’s gone dry and there’s a colony of rats living in his stomach just about the time he realizes that yeah, okay, he’d actually really like to go to the game with Steve.

Within half a heartbeat of _that_ trainwreck of a thought he’s thought of a hundred and forty one places he could secrete them neatly that are currently within his reach; and he has at least twenty-three excuses lined up in his brain as to what they are, what they could be, what they’re for, and not, absolutely not, tickets for Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in a private box all on their own in an undoubtedly romantic fashion.

Tony looks up at Steve, and holds out his hand.


End file.
